CHAPTER XI.

LUCY TEMPEST.

The words of my lady, “as tall as a giantess,”
unconsciously influenced the imagination of Lionel
Verner. The train was steaming into the station
at one end as his carriage stopped at the other.
Lionel leaped from it, and mingled with the bustle
of the platform.

Not very much bustle, either; and it would have been
less, but that Deerham Station was the nearest approach,
as yet, by rail, to Heartburg, a town of some note
about four miles distant. Not a single tall lady
got out of the train. Not a lady at all that
Lionel could see. There were two fat women, tearing
about after their luggage, both habited in men’s
drab greatcoats, or what looked like them; and there
was one very young lady, who stood back in apparent
perplexity, gazing at the scene of confusion around
her.

“She cannot be Miss Tempest,” deliberated
Lionel. “If she is, my mother must have
mistaken her age; she looks but a child. No harm
in asking her, at any rate.”

He went up to the young lady. A very pleasant-looking
girl, fair, with a peach bloom upon her cheeks, dark
brown hair and eyes, soft and brown and luminous.
Those eyes were wandering to all parts of the platform,
some anxiety in their expression.

Lionel raised his hat.

“I beg your pardon. Have I the honour of
addressing Miss Tempest?”

“Oh, yes, that is my name,” she answered,
looking up at him, the peach bloom deepening to a
glow of satisfaction, and the soft eyes lighting with
a glad smile. “Have you come to meet me?”

“I have. I come from my mother, Lady Verner.”

“I am so glad,” she rejoined, with a frank
sincerity of manner perfectly refreshing in these
modern days of artificial young ladyism. “I
was beginning to think nobody had come; and then what
could I have done?”

“My sister would have come with me to receive
you, but for an accident which occurred to her just
before it was time to start. Have you any luggage?”

“There’s the great box I brought from
India, and a hair-trunk, and my school-box. It
is all in the van.”

“Allow me to take you out of this crowd, and
it shall be seen to,” said Lionel, bending to
offer his arm.

She took it, and turned with him; but stopped ere
more than a step or two had been taken.

“We are going wrong. The luggage is up
that way.”

“I am taking you to the carriage. The luggage
will be all right.”

He was placing her in it, when she suddenly drew back
and surveyed it.

“What a pretty carriage!” she exclaimed.

Many said the same of the Verner’s Pride equipages.
The colour of the panels was of that rich shade of
blue called ultra-marine, with white linings and hammer-cloths,
while a good deal of silver shone on the harness of
the horses. The servants’ livery was white
and silver, their small-clothes blue.